While digital innovation has the power to transform mental health services, researchers and developers need to engage mental health nurses and address issues of trust and transparency to ensure these tools reach their potential.
There is a growing push to leverage digital tools to support Mental Health Nursing across the care continuum.
The National Digital Mental Health Framework outlines an approach to improve efficiencies and access to mental health services in Australia, including:
- Enabling digital triage and referral processes
- Increasing peer support in the delivery of services\
- Ensuring services are scaled up in a cost-effective way.
However, digital tools – artificial intelligence (AI), in particular – are not without their challenges.
Oliver Higgins, PhD, Associate Director Mental Health of Central Coast Local Health District, has been at the forefront of research into machine learning and AI in Mental Health Nursing in Australia.
Dr Higgins, a registered nurse (RN) and a member of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses (ACMHN), said the digital health revolution was in the early stages across the nursing landscape, particularly in Mental Health Nursing.
“My PhD was about the use of artificial intelligence to support mental health nurses in the Emergency Department setting for the assessment of patients,” Dr Higgins said. “One of the biggest things we found was the lack of staff engagement and trust, as well as their perception of AI.”
Fostering faith in new tech
While the Australian Government’s Digital Health Blueprint highlighted the need for digital literacy as a fundamental skill in day-to-day nursing practice, much needs to be done to ensure the quality of digitally assisted care and nurses’ comfort with its delivery.
Dr Higgins said nurses should understand that digital tools were designed to enhance nursing practice, not to replace them.
“It’s about returning hours to care, which is what nurses want to do – we're there to care and spend time with people,” he said. “Using the generative elements of AI could help us with the more laborious parts of our work.”
However, if nurses don’t have faith in the digital tools, they are less likely to use them or recommend them.
“We have to create tools that can demonstrate transparency and show how they came to make the recommendations they did,” Dr Higgins said.
To achieve this, AI should be fed the best qualitative data, such as medical records and high-quality notes written by clinicians and vetted by clinicians, to create bigger and better decision models.
Researchers and developers need to understand the complexity of trust and credibility in the use of AI, including working with experienced clinicians to ensure that biases are addressed and the delivery of evidence-based medicine is not compromised.
How communication can earn trust
The federal government framework noted several barriers to broader access to digital mental health services, including:
- The lack of a consistent and standardised approach to assess, triage, and refer consumers to services based on risk and need
- Limited understanding by health professionals and providers about how digital tools are best used to support consumers at each stage of the care continuum.
Dr Higgins said clinicians needed to better understand AI so they could use it effectively, explain how it works for patients, and be alert to any potential negative consequences.
Having worked hard to build empathetic relationships with vulnerable patients, mental health nurses needed to be transparent about the use of AI, he added.
“If the service is a genuine AI-driven service, that needs to be communicated,” Dr Higgins said. “If someone thinks they’re genuinely talking to a real person, only to find out it’s a chatbot, that creates distrust.”
National framework a key to success
With the ad hoc application of digital tools another area of concern, Dr Higgins believes a properly connected, nationwide digital healthcare framework would help Australia capitalise on the technology.
“If we had a consistent level of delivery, the underlying data we collected would be phenomenal, which in turn would inform how we move forward,” he said.
While Dr Higgins sees enormous opportunities in AI for nurses working in mental health, he said this could not happen without investment across all areas, or the direct involvement of clinicians.
Collaboration with mental health nurses is critical to ensuring services that are tailored and precise, with a person-centred approach to the delivery of care.
“Credentialled mental health nurses do not replace the work of GPs, psychiatrists, or psychologists in the mental health space but instead work with them to augment the delivery of strategies through the digital platform,” Dr Higgins said.
As noted by the ACMHN, Australia’s mental health needs will not be met without the development of specialist skills across the healthcare continuum. ACMHN is collaborating with Wolters Kluwer to equip healthcare providers and nursing communities with evidence-based procedures to improve patient outcomes.
With a consistent and qualitative approach to the use of AI and other digital tools, mental health nurses will be better equipped to address the needs of the nation.
Find out more about how Lippincott® Solutions can support nurses in Australia’s healthcare settings.
